Szilárd Borbély
Translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet

Gyöngyös, Lower Town Cemetery, August 11, 2010
We are troubled if we must speak of death,
which is merely a part of existence. It is not existence
itself. It is nothing but a ray of light falling obliquely
on the forking branches bending above the path. It is incised in the sleepy afternoon
as the screeching of the lavishly feathered pheasant cock.
Because why do we rejoice for every day that
shines down upon us, until our bodies, stooped,
finally lie down to rest in the evening? All things from the end
speak to us of the helplessness of the beginning. Birth,
as well, lures tears into our eyes. If we recall that bloody,
viscous body, upon  which light falls from within,
surging, for inside there is none. For why do we give ourselves over
fully to that moment when joy, traveling through the body,
veers too close to us. For surely it is too close, it waits beyond
the other side of the body, always there, the sign beyond language. Or is
there any distance between the body and the self?—Why is farewell so difficult,
and why is mourning so light in its weight? Because life goes on,
they say. . . But what does that mean to the one
who is dead? How do we bid farewell to him,
no longer among us? Or perhaps never was. Because he who was here
left only a trace, but nothing of his own self. Nothing of
who he was. How do we bid farewell to the one
we can never speak to again, we speak only of him? Just as
our words, from now on, may only speak about him,
but we may never speak to him again? To whom? The one who was. But who
was that person of whom we say it was he? Who is still
here among us, as dust and ashes.
from the book IN A BUCOLIC LAND / New York Review Books
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“Mourning Verse, on the Death of Lajos Szuromi” was written in two separate versions by Szilárd Borbély in 2010. The second version, presented here, was read at the funeral of Prof. Szuromi, who had been an important mentor to Borbély, and who, like him, had grown up in deeply impoverished circumstances. Borbély’s investigations of the transience of materiality evoke memory’s waywardness, the ungraspability of the mourned subject.

Ottilie Mulzet on "3.1 Mourning Verse, on the Death of Lajos Szuromi"
2022 Lammy Awards Announced

This year, Lambda Literary honored four poets with Lammy Awards: Tamiko Beyer for the collection, Last Days, John Keene for Punks: New and Selected Poems, Aurielle Marie for Gumbo Ya Ya, and Mason J. for Crossbones on My Life. In addition, poet and activist Ching-In Chen won the Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers.

via LAMBDA LITERARY
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Cover of Suji Kwock Kim's book, Notes from the Divided Country
What Sparks Poetry:
Sarah Audsley on Suji Kwock Kim's Notes from the Divided Country

"It was 2011, at The Frost Place Conference on Poetry after Vievee Francis’s talk. Afterward, when I became a bit emotional—her talk opened me up; the best talks do; I cried—she looked at me and told me to read Suji Kwock Kim, to search out and to read poetry by Korean/Korean American poets. As an adoptee, born in South Korea and raised in rural Vermont, this was a decisive moment for me."
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